It’s an incredibly handy detachable horizontal tube holder for efficient and consistent mixing of multiple samples for time periods too inconvenient to hold by hand. Try saying that three times fast!
Every once in a while we get technical calls or emails about attaching the vortex adapter to the Vortex Genie 2. It can be a little bit tricky if [...]

Isolation of RNA, no matter what the source, is nerve wracking, but especially when samples are limited or irreplaceable.  Because RNA is so labile, working quickly but carefully is the key. There are ways to protect your RNA during the procedure so that you can work at a relaxed pace and without so much anxiety. Today I’d like [...]

Many thanks to Russell Neches from the Jonathan Eisen Lab at UC Davis for sending us this great instructional video for using sterivex water filters in the field. And many thanks for giving MO BIO and the PowerWater Sterivex DNA Isolation Kit a shout out in the comments!
Here it is, if you’ve never used a [...]

A frequent question to our technical support team is how to isolate DNA from buccal swabs or swabbed material.  Here are our recommendations for performing an extraction of DNA from swabs based on feedback from our customers.  Whether or not to use bead beating depends on whether you are trying to isolate DNA from microbes or [...]

As we’ve discussed before, the labs participating in the Human Microbiome Project  (HMP) and now the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP) use the PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit for extraction of DNA from difficult samples because of the increased performance of the DNA in sensitive enzymatic applications.  Human samples from the gut/stool, surface of the skin, and mouth as well as [...]

PCR is one of the most common techniques performed in virtually all molecular labs today. It is so routine, that when something goes wrong, it can be exceptionally frustrating.  No one wants to spend time troubleshooting a problem that is as simple as mixing a few solutions together in a tube and putting it into a [...]

Today I wanted to talk about a method that you’ve been doing forever in your science career. Something so basic, so easy, that I bet you don’t even have to think about it. I bet you can do this type of prep in your sleep. What am I talking about? Plasmid preps, of course!
Plasmid DNA [...]

As part of our research on the best practices for soil microbial DNA extraction, we collect a wide variety of samples for product development. So when we were developing the protocols for the PowerLyzer, we wanted a protocol that worked for most of the samples tested.  Our work on homogenization and bead tubes previously showed that depending on the [...]

We’ve all learned how to isolate RNA from tissues, using methods we’ve discussed before in this blog and utilizing our fast and easy column purification based kit.
However, we frequently get requests for isolation of microRNA (miRNA) from tissue samples. MicroRNAs are very short 22 base sequences that play a role in

MO BIO recently launched a method for the isolation of DNA and RNA from a very difficult sample type called biofilm. In a previous article, we explained some of the difficulties associated with working with biofilm and biomats. These sample types are not like any other environmental sample and require specialized chemistry to break through the EPS [...]